| Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (born 5 May 1988), better known simply as Adele, is an English singer-songwriter, musician and multi-instrumentalist. Adele was offered a recording contract from XL Recordings after a friend posted her demo on MySpace in 2006. The next year she received the Brit Awards' "Critics' Choice" award and won the BBC Sound of 2008. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 to much commercial and critical success. It certified four times platinum in the UK, and double platinum in the US. Her career in the US was boosted by a Saturday Night Live appearance in late 2008. At the 2009 Grammy Awards, Adele received the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
Adele released her second album, 21, in early 2011. The album was well received critically and surpassed the success of her debut, earning the singer six Grammy Awards in 2012 including Album of the Year, equalling the record for most Grammy Awards won by a female artist in one night. The album has also led to her receiving numerous other awards, including two Brit Awards and three American Music Awards. The album has been certified 16 times platinum in the UK; in the US the album has held the top position longer than any other album since 1985, and is certified Diamond. As of right now, it is the fourth best-selling album of all-time in the UK. According to IFPI, the album has sold over 26 million copies worldwide.
The success of 21 earned Adele numerous mentions in the Guinness World Records. She is the first artist to sell more than 3 million copies of an album in a year in the UK. With her two albums and the first two singles from 21, "Rolling in the Deep" and "Someone Like You", she became the first living artist to achieve the feat of having two top-five hits in both the UK Official Singles Chart and the Official Albums Chart simultaneously since the Beatles in 1964. With her third release from the album, "Set Fire to the Rain", which became her third number one single in the US, Adele became the first artist in history to lead the Billboard 200 concurrently with three Billboard Hot 100 number-ones. Two more less successful singles from 21 were released: "Rumour Has It" (which peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100) and "Turning Tables" (which peaked at number 63 on the Hot 100 due to not being released as an official single in the US like it was in the majority of Europe).
Adele is the first female in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to have three singles in the top 10 at the same time as a lead artist, and the first female artist to have two albums in the top five of the Billboard 200 and two singles in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. 21 is the longest running number one album by a female solo artist on the UK and US Albums Chart. In 2011 and 2012, Billboard named Adele Artist of the Year. In 2012, Adele was listed at number five on VH1′s 100 Greatest Women In Music, and the American magazine Time named Adele one of the most influential people in the world. In 2012, Adele announced via her official website that she and her partner Simon were expecting a child, and on October 19, 2012, Adele gave birth to their son, Angelo. In 2013, she received an Oscar as well as the Golden Globe for Best Original Song for her song "Skyfall", written for the twenty-third James Bond film of the same name.
In spring of 2013, Adele was rumored to have entered back into the studio with past collaborator Paul Epworth and producers Kid Harpoon and James Ford to begin work on her third album. She reportedly has four songs finished and will continue to work on it in London before flying to Los Angeles to finish recording the album, with plans to release the album by mid-2014, although previous reports suggested an autumn 2013 release for the album.
Read More...
|
Create blog post 
